Impact of Spiritual Well-Being on The Quality of Life Among the Muslim Elderly

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Increasing elderly population will have an impact on increasing demand for long-term health care. As a person gets older, there is increase in their health problems. The challenges facing the health authorities is to increase life expectancy of people through improving the quality of life of the elderly. Spirituality has become an important aspect of improvement of health related quality of life. This study aims to identify the relationship between spiritual well-being and the quality of life of the elderly living in nursing homes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study is a crossectional study conducted in Central Java Province, Indonesia. The sample size was 131 Muslim elderly people living in nursing homes. Study respondents were recruited randomly with criteria of being able to communicate and having good cognitive function. Spiritual well-being was measured using the Spiritual Assessment Scale (SAS) and the Quality of life (QOL) was measured using the WHOQOL-OLD. RESULT: The spiritual well-being of the respondents was mostly low. The QOL of the respondents was mostly low. The results of the Pearson correlation test showed that all three aspects of spirituality had a relationship with all the three domains of QOL. Religious practices have a very strong relationship with psychological functioning (p=0.000, r=0.793). Conclusion: The higher the spiritual well-being, the higher the QOL of the elderly living in nursing homes. The results of this research can be used by nurses in nursing homes to determine interventions to improve spiritual well-being in the elderly.